


i can't give you it all (but i promise to hug you tightly)

by remi_mae



Series: Anthea Lin-Wayne [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Batfamily, Brother-Sister Relationships, Family, Gen, It's only mentioned but still, Police Officer Dick Grayson, Sibling Bonding, that's a platonic tag right?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 19:35:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21086675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remi_mae/pseuds/remi_mae
Summary: A few weeks into her time with the Wayne's, and Anthea had really hoped the nightmares would get better - and maybe they are, but she's still waking up way too early a lot of the time. One night when she can't stay asleep, she finds someone else still awake and finally gets some one on one time with Dick. Apparently talking about nightmares and dead parents works as sibling bonding, who knew.





	i can't give you it all (but i promise to hug you tightly)

**Author's Note:**

> This was intended to be the like, 3rd chapter of a seven chapter fic, one chapter per Batfam member, but I can't seem to write them in the order I wanted and like... I want to post this. So. Each chapter should stand fine on it's own anyway, so I'll be posting them as one shots. This takes place a few weeks after Anthea starts being fostered by Bruce.
> 
> Anyway! I start a new job tomorrow(!!!) so it might be a bit before the next fic depending on how tired I am but! I love writing and maybe having to talk to people will help with inspiration sometimes, idk. Sorry if this like, drags on too long or seems to cut off abruptly; I never know how to end things (plus I started writing the second half before I started the first half and I probably could've split it into two chapters or two separate fics but I didn't really... want to? I dunno.)
> 
> Title from Promise by Ateez.

It wasn't that Anthea didn't like Dick Grayson-Wayne, because she did, honest. No, it was more that he was just a bit overwhelming.

Compared to the rest of the family, Dick was a lot more outgoing and talkative and Anthea just fit in more with the rest of them. She was introverted and quiet, not to mention being a generally anxious person. The eldest of her new foster siblings could just... be a bit much, sometimes. (Of course, Damian could be too, but in a very different way.)

According to Jason, Tim _and_ Cass, that was just how Dick was - bright, outgoing and friendly, never caring when he was the centre of attention. It was certainly a good thing, since he was a Wayne and thus constantly in the spotlight, but she found him a little overwhelming sometimes. It didn't mean anything though, not really. Anthea certainly didn't mind outgoing, extroverted people, she just tended to find them exhausting to be around for long periods of time - but she found it tiring to be around people in general really, so it wasn't a big thing.

So no, it wasn't that Anthea didn't like her oldest foster brother. She liked Dick a lot (even if using his name in a sentence often times made the sentence sound weird) but she'd yet to spend any real amount of time with him. She wasn't even sure dinner counted, mostly because if Dick was at dinner, he was usually trying to get Damian to talk about something, often distracting him from her and Tim, if Damian was in a Mood™ (as Tim liked to put it.)

It wasn't until she'd woken up from a nightmare far earlier than she normally did that she really got to talk to Dick.

Like most nights, Anthea couldn't remember what jerked her awake. It was a small blessing really.

Although she couldn't quite remember what had happened in her dream, she couldn't shake the feeling of terror.

A quick glance at the clock on her bedside table told her it was way too early to get up for real. So, she did what she normally did when she couldn't immediately fall back to sleep. She tried to do homework (she'd already done everything) and tried to read (she couldn't focus on any of the words in front of her) and even tried pacing around her room. The feeling of terror, of fear that something was watching her, it wouldn't go away.

Another glance at the clock.

2:12am.

With a quiet groan, Anthea gave up.

She pulled on a heavy sweater and quietly crept out of her room.

Although Wayne Manor was old, she'd noticed nothing really creaked. There was the odd spot here and there, but those were few and far between. As such, it wasn't hard to get to the kitchen without alerting anyone in the house. But then again, with how large the manor was (and the late hour) she was pretty sure she'd have to be _trying_ to wake someone to alert them to her presence.

When she got to the kitchen, she was surprised to find the lights already on. Everyone should have been asleep, considering the time.

Well, it _could_ have been Tim, but given what she knew of him, if he was still awake he probably wouldn't be sitting in the kitchen where anyone could find him.

She wouldn't have said it was a surprise to find Dick but it was maybe a little surprising to see him sitting on the counter with a bowl of cereal in his hands.

He seemed rather out of it, and considering the time, she couldn't blame him. She also knew he'd worked a late shift, so it couldn't have been that long since he'd gotten off work.

"Dick?" He startled when she said his name - never lost the grip on his bowl though.

"Hm?" He looked up and blinked, before relaxing a little. "Oh, it's just you. Hey Anthy." According to Tim (and Jason, and Cass, and Bruce) Dick was someone who tended to give people nicknames. In fact, within like, five minutes of meeting him he'd asked her if there were any nicknames from her name that she didn't like (Ant and Anty, for slightly more obvious reasons, and she wasn't overly fond of Thea for herself) and had pretty much immediately taken to calling her Anthy. She didn't mind, at all, but it was a little weird. Most people never asked her what nicknames she liked and kids at school either used her full given name or called her Thea without asking if she minded it (she never bothered correcting them though, because they never listened.)

"What are you doing up?" Dick seemed to be done with his bowl and set it beside him on the counter. Anthea thought about lying, saying she just needed a drink, but decided against it.

"Nightmare." She shrugged a little, moving further into the kitchen. She got the glass of water she came down for and sat down at the island. Dick didn't say anything immediately, probably waiting to see if she'd say more. "I don't really... remember what it was about? But I can't shake it either." She shrugged again. "It was... it was probably about my dad. I dunno."

Dick made a quiet noise, one Anthea would almost describe as a distressed noise, but she wasn't quite sure. He hopped off of the counter though, and walked over to sit next to her at the island. "Tell me about him?"

Huh?

"Your dad," Dick clarified. "I don't mean how he died or anything like that, but just... tell me about him?" When she didn't make any move to immediately start talking, Dick smiled, leaning back a little. "When Bruce first took me in, I had nightmares about my parents dying, a lot. Instead of just assuring me it was okay, it was just a nightmare, he'd ask me about my parents, get me focused on happy memories about them instead of being stuck on the memory of them dying." That... that made sense.

Anthea took a sip of her water and then started talking.

"It was always just me and baba. My mom died when I was a baby, so I don't remember her. We moved to Gotham after that." She paused, tapping her fingers against the side of her glass. "Baba worked in the IT department, but since I was so young he ended up working from home a lot, at least until I started school." A neighbour had watched her on days where he had to go into work, but for the most part Harrison Lin had worked from home up until she started school - then he worked the same hours she was in school. Wayne Enterprises was pretty good about that, she'd say.

Anthea went on, talked about how her dad had taught her to how take apart a computer and put it back together again, and just generally how to work computers and how to fix something if it stopped working or was broken. As she got older, he taught her the basics of coding, though learning coding and how to hack (mostly for benign reasons, like getting past a password on a computer she was trying to fix) was mostly all her. Her dad taught her the basics and she went from there, showing him things she'd coded and asking for help when she needed it. It was just kind of their thing, and made Anthea feel closer to her dad - because aside from computers, she and her dad hadn't had a lot of hobbies in common. They cooked together too, but that wasn't so much a hobby.

Her dad had liked sports and sci-fi movies, where Anthea liked history and fantasy books, especially historical fantasy.

Still, they would watch sports games and sci-fi movies together, and she would ramble on about some historical event she'd read about, or whatever fantasy novel she'd picked up from the library last. Computers were probably the only hobby her and her father shared in the sense that they both liked computers, but they still shared everything else.

Dick didn't say anything the entire time - just leaned against the island, resting his head in his hand and let her ramble away.

He was right. It did help get her mind off her nightmare, although she didn't take into account that now she'd just be thinking about her dad and well... it was hard to think about him much without crying yet. Dick seemed to notice right around the same time she did. Anthea realized she was crying and then suddenly she was being hugged. She hadn't realize how long it had been since someone had properly hugged her.

It took a few minutes for her to calm down, and even when she did, she didn't let go of Dick, not immediately. With one hand holding her head close and the other rubbing her back, Anthea could honestly say it was the warmest she'd felt since her father died. The most loved she'd felt since then too.

To say that Anthea was surprised to see Dick's car pulled up to the curb that afternoon instead of Alfred would be... putting it mildly. She pulled out her phone, to check if maybe she'd just missed a text message or call from Alfred or Bruce telling her Dick was going to pick her up instead, but there was nothing.

Abbey, unsurprisingly, was the first of her friends to notice - and of course she immediately pointed it out.

"Hey, isn't that-?" The other girl turned to face Anthea, who was torn between embarrassment and anxiety. Because her friends were absolutely going to tease her (she'd heard pretty much all of them going on about how the Wayne boys were all so attractive, and like, she got it, but they're her foster brothers now.) But also everyone in school knew her father had died and that Bruce Wayne was fostering her now. Alfred picking her up was one thing - most people didn't realize that Alfred was family too, not just the butler - but Dick picking her up? It's all anyone would talk about, at least for a few days.

Alfred also didn't get out of the car and lean on the passenger side door while waiting, which was _exactly_ what Dick was doing.

"Uh huh," Anthea nodded, taking a few steps forward and turning to face her friends. They had noticed as well, and were clearly going to start interrogating her if she didn't get a move on - so she got a move on. "Right, I gotta go. See you Monday!" And with that, she hurried through the crowd of students looking around for their own rides or killing time talking to their friends. Mostly they weren't paying attention at all, but the ones who had noticed Dick and were paying attention? It didn't take long for them to notice her pushing past people and trying to get over to her foster brother.

"Hey, Anthy." She kind of wanted to be annoyed at him for, well, drawing attention to her honestly, but couldn't. Not when she knew he worked late the night before but still stayed up later with her and got her to talk to distract from her nightmares (couple of other reasons too, least of all being that she wasn't sure she could actually be mad at Dick. He was too... _him_. All nice and big brotherly. Plus he gave really good hugs, as she'd very recently learned.)

"Not that I don't want you here, but why are you here?" She didn't mean for that to be the first thing out of her mouth, but it was. It made Dick laugh, before he pushed away from his car and opened the door for her.

"I am taking you shopping. Anywhere you want to go." Anthea was already in the car and halfway through putting her seat belt on when his words registered.

"Wait, what? Why?" She asked as soon as Dick was in the car and could actually hear her.

She knew Bruce said if she needed anything, at all, to just tell him or Alfred and they'd either get it, or take her to pick it out, but she... she hadn't hinted or said she needed anything. She'd been trying _not_ to. Just the fact that Bruce had taken her in, given her a place to live and a family, was more than enough - plus she just wasn't used to being able to get whatever she wanted or needed the minute she wanted or needed it. She was used to having to save up if she wanted something, and there really wasn't anything she needed right now.

"Because," Dick paused to pull away from the curb, "you've only left the manor to go to school so far. This'll get you out of the manor, if nothing else." Okay, yeah, she couldn't argue with that. She hadn't needed to go to the library to study because she wasn't sharing a room with anyone who made it hard to focus. If she didn't want to do her homework in her room, she could just go to the library in the manor, or one of the many sitting rooms. There was always somewhere quiet she could go. She also wasn't _that_ close to anyone she went to school with, so she was fine just seeing them at school. They texted, sometimes, but a lot of her classmates just wanted to know what Wayne Manor or the Wayne's were like, so she'd been trying to ignore them.

Dick continued though, and she let him explain. "I also have to get a few things and I haven't really gotten to spend any time with you yet." Anthea felt it best not to mention that she hadn't really spent much time with any of them yet. She certainly spent more time around Alfred, but that was mostly just because he was already awake and working on breakfast when she woke up from nightmares and didn't want to try and sleep anymore. Aside from Alfred, Tim was the easiest to talk to, and aside from last night (that morning?) she hadn't spent any time alone with Dick because Damian was always hanging around him.

"I mean. Yeah, okay." It wasn't like she had much choice but... he was right about it getting her out of the manor, if nothing else. She would sometimes go sit in the backyard, if she just needed to get outside, but she hadn't gone out to the library or even a coffee shop or something since she moved in with the Wayne's. She just hadn't really felt like she needed to go out - and also maybe she was a little nervous about asking someone to drive her somewhere, not wanting to make them go out of their way. Dick was clearly offering though, and he didn't really seem like he would let her say no anyway.

Dick grinned, apparently pleased she'd actually agreed and he didn't have to like, kidnap her or something (a thought that Anthea found rather amusing, honestly, given Dick was a cop and all.)

Anthea was not generally a chatty person so it didn't surprise her that she spoke less than Dick, but he did end up chatting away while they drove. She didn't find it overwhelming but rather almost comforting. Dick filled the silence, didn't seem to expect her to reply all the time, but still aimed some questions at her and gave her time to respond if she wanted to.

When her social worker had first pulled up to Wayne Manor and she put the pieces together, Anthea honestly hadn't thught she would get along with anyone. Not that she thought the Wayne's were all stuck up or anything, and before meeting them she hadn't known much about them, but they were the richest family in Gotham. They were local celebrities and that meant they were larger than life, at least to people like her. The first night she was there, Alfred and Bruce had made sure everyone was home for dinner and any preconceived notions she might have had about any of them went out the window, more or less.

If nothing else, she'd thought she wouldn't have anything in common with anyone, or that she would just sort of get ignored - but it was anything but. It was weird, because her entire life it had just been her and her dad and now she had this big family - foster family, sure, but she was already starting to think of them as her family. She had siblings and it was _weird_. Not bad mind you - she'd always kind of wanted a sibling, had been jealous of friends who weren't only children - it was just odd.

"You know, I always wanted a big brother." Anthea said after they'd pulled into a parking spot.

She looked over when Dick didn't reply after a moment to find him staring at her, just smiling.

"You mean that? You're not just saying it?" He was teasing, even she could tell, but she nodded anyway.

"Most of my friends had siblings and I always kind of wanted one. I don't think my dad ever moved on from my mom, so I was never getting any younger siblings." Not that she was going to get an older one, since that's not really how it works. She was, generally speaking, always the youngest person in class though and her friends had always liked to tease her. They were never mean about it, more like just joking she was the baby of the group. Some of her friends had babied her a little, though all it had really done was make her wish she had an older sibling (or an older cousin even, which she _had_, but they were all in China and she didn't know any of them.)

Dick's smile just got bigger (but also softer) and Anthea looked down at her lap, feeling her face heating up a little. "I just... I dunno, I always wanted someone who I could confide in? I could tell my dad almost everything, but some things you just don't want to talk to your dad about, you know?" He gave a snort of a laugh, which told her he probably knew _exactly_ what she meant.

"Well," Dick started, "If you don't feel like you can talk to me, and don't want to tell Bruce, I know for a fact Jason, Cass or Tim would listen. And if it's like, girl stuff, there's Steph and Babs, too." Despite having been with the Wayne's for couple of weeks Anthea had yet to meet Barbara Gordon. She'd been introduced to Stephanie Brown but it had really just been a "oh, you're the newest stray Bruce picked up? Nice to meet you!" and then Stephanie was gone again. (Tim had apologized on her behalf, but honestly, Anthea found it funny so it was fine.)

She nodded, looking back up at Dick and smiling. He smiled back and then reached over and ruffled her hair, prompting her to whine and lean out of the way.

With a laugh, Dick moved to get out of the car. "Come on, little flower, it's time for you to get out of the manor for a bit and for me to spend some time with my new younger sister." Anthea laughed as well and followed more than ready to spend some time with her new big brother.

**Author's Note:**

> The 'little flower' is because I have pretty much always loved the idea of Dick having specific nicknames for his siblings - like, Jason's little wing and Tim is baby bird (Cass is little bat while Damian is baby bat, for this specific verse) and I can't remember if that's at all canon but I also don't care. Dick probably won't use the others nicknames until Anthea learns the secret. Little flower is because Anthea means 'blossom' or 'flower' in Greek, and 'little flower' just sounded cuter to me.


End file.
